Plum

Plum the Pug, lives in Paris with his human mom, Juliet, a student at the renowned culinary school, Le Cordon Bleu. When a van carrying wine (after all, it is Paris) hits little Plum, his life and Juliet’s, changes dramatically. This funny, canine coming-of-age story features Plum, the talking dog, who not only becomes human in his thoughts but is magically gifted with a palate to rival that of any highly esteemed French chef. And this is where his adventure begins as Plum decides to become a Paris restaurant critic, food blogger and author. Aided by Juliet, and the handsome Tomas, Juliet’s chef instructor at Le Cordon Bleu, Plum takes on the highly charged and cruelly vicious Paris food scene. Plum quickly becomes an international sensation and global media star, after all he is a talking dog. But too much wine, food, TMZ and Access Hollywood-fueled fame help send his celebrity excesses and life spinning wildly out of control. Falling in love was not supposed to happen either. Finding himself at rock bottom, Plum hopes he’ll get a second chance at a normal life. He wonders if the uneasy truth behind his ability to speak will ever come out. And if getting a perfectly clean slate will, truly, give him exactly what he needs to be comfortable in his own, furry, skin.

I’m currently in talks with the producers
of Top Chef France to be a celebrity
judge on the French version. I’ve told them no thanks twice, but there’s a summer
place in Aix-en-Provence with my name on it, and they keep throwing more money
at me, so I may take the job.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself,
which is a flaw, as is my self-involvement and lack of modesty (of which I am
aware and I’m working on it). I’ve been in therapy trying to get in touch with
my ego. I tell my shrink that it’s in my DNA, but she says my ego goes much
deeper than that.

“You are a dog, first and foremost,” she
says.
“You may not like it, but you are not human. You might behave and think like
one, but you are of the canine species. The sooner you come to terms with that,
as unsatisfying as it may be, then and only then, can your real work begin.”

Besides English, I speak fluent French
and some Italian largely because when I used to go for a weekend at George
Clooney’s villa in Lake Como, I didn’t like to appear touristy. Most of the
Italians I’ve encountered have a resistance to my ability to speak. I tell them
to deal with it.

“Affrontare il problema,” I say with the
hint of a growl.

Although I was born on a puppy farm in
Oklahoma specializing in pugs and bulldogs, I’ve been a Francophile since I was
eight-and-a-half months, which was when my mother and I came to Paris.

My birth parents, (of whom I have no
memory, but I’ve seen my papers), were named Gus and Ginger. How they wound up
in Oklahoma, I don’t know because they were born in Minnesota and Iowa
respectively. At nine weeks I was sent to an American Kennel store in New York
City, the Upper East Side, to be precise. I was there for two days when the
woman who bought me showed up.